The Kaiser-Frazer Story is a huge one, and now that I’ve read Richard Langworth’s excellent book, we’ll try to break it into digestible pieces from time to time. There were so many outsized personalities (read: egos) involved, and so much money wasted on frivolous exercises and customized cars for anyone who asked nicely. One of the key figures was Carlton Spencer, an extremely creative and talented interior designer (decorator?) who revolutionized the industry with his innovative use of materials, colors and patterns. Kaiser cars may not always have been the flashiest on the outside, but they certainly were inside.

For the 1951 Chicago Auto Show, Spencer prepared four specially-trimmed cars, and with them set perhaps a pinnacle in over-the-the top interiors.

The Safari was trimmed in genuine zebra fur and lion pelts, the manes of which appear to be used on the front floor.

The South Sea featured Hawaiian design upholstery, woven grass mats on the floor and dash,

as well as fish nets and nautical instruments. Just needs some tiki lights, and a bar for the Mai Tais.

The Caballero was trimmed with a variety of horse hides,

along with cowboy spurs, belt buckles and saddlebags. Giddyup!

The Explorer was plushly upholstered in polar bear pelts, with brown bear fur as accents. Well, it was 1951…

Langworth’s book is a good one; I imagine it didn’t sell all that well because of the relative obscurity of Kaiser-Frazer. I miss these old-fashioned, print-age automotive histories because they offer more analytical depth. More recent histories tend to be of the coffee table variety, with lots of pictures and narrative primarily targeted at collectors.

I wonder if Joe Frazer might have been more successful — at least for a while — if he had steered clear of Henry Kaiser and instead tried to revive the Graham brand. Frazer was president of Graham-Paige, which had halted automotive production in 1940 due to terrible sales of its infamous “sharknose” and a Cord-based body shared with Hupmobile.

Frazer understood better than Kaiser that humility and cost-consciousness are crucial to the survival of an independent automaker.

Unfortunately, Henry Kaiser had something that Joe Frazer and Graham-Paige lacked: Money. I guess a second thing was that image of a winner that is always a boost. I am with you on the declining quality of automotive histories.

JP, of course you’re right. But if ever there was a chance for a reboot, this was the time, both because of profits generated from the war as well as pent-up consumer demand. Kaiser wasn’t terribly deep pocketed anyway, e.g., by 1949 Henry was borrowing from the government to stay in business.

One irony is that Graham’s manufacturing facility might have been better suited to Kaiser’s fairly low production than the massive Willow Run plant that they acquired. Talk about getting in over your head.

Frazer’s fatal mistake: He didn’t seem to realize until too late that he was not a full partner in Kaiser-Frazer.

According to Langworth, Frazer had doubts about Willow Run from the start, although it was certainly a steal in financial terms and obviously Henry J. liked doing things big.

I think it’s important to recognize with the Langworth book that it is pretty heavily skewed toward the Frazer point of view: Langworth interviewed Frazer himself at length, along with many of Frazer’s former allies like Hickman Price, but almost none of the Kaiser contingent. That wasn’t Langworth’s fault — he said the Kaiser people didn’t want to talk to him, and Henry Kaiser himself had recently died — but from a historical perspective, it’s too bad. It isn’t that the Frazer people weren’t candid or honest, but there’s an inevitable overtone of “If only they had listened to our wisdom ….” Had Edgar Kaiser been willing to talk to Langworth, the story might have looked a little different.

As I’ve said before, I don’t think the ending would have been much different, in any case. If Kaiser had listened more to Frazer, the company might not have ended up quite as overextended, but I still have a lot of trouble seeing them surviving the ’50s.

(This is not to say the Langworth book isn’t an impressive piece of work — it sets a standard for books of that type. I would like to get a copy of it; I’d previously had to cajole the public library into letting me check out a reference-only copy to read it.)

Got mine used on Amazon: $29.95; a former library book from Northwest Missouri State University. And I’ve been finding some other books really cheap, sometimes pennies above the cost of shipping. The book industry ain’t what it used to be, it seems.

It’s a flukey thing. I recall when I was looking for the book, the cheapest copy I could find online was like $45, which was more than I could justify.

With the Kaiser book, it turned out the city public library had three copies downtown, all marked as reference, so with some persuasion they let me actually check one out. The moral of the story is be kind to librarians, I guess…

>>According to Langworth, Frazer had doubts about Willow Run from the start, although it was certainly a steal in financial terms and obviously Henry J. liked doing things big.<<

Not so. Frazer was amazed by the size of the plant, but was confident they could make a go of it. He began to have doubts in 1948, over the incessant demand by the Kaisers for increased production in off years, and over the money spent on blind alleys.

Nor is it true that no Kaiser people talked to me. Lots did–but not upper management. It was fairly broadly hinted that they didn't want to dwell on their one big failure. But the final chapter on why the company failed recognizes the position of both sides.

One of them out of the first printing is still in my basement, having provided me hours of education and enjoyment. It sits with the early Studebaker, Chrysler/Imperial, Packard and Hudson books, also bought during the 70s. It is an honor to see you comment here! Cool website, by the way. I had no idea that you were also a Churchill historian. Now I know.

Richard, since you seem sensitive about the issue, know that I bought your book when it first came out. I was a geeky teenager. If there was another soul in high school who had a similar fascination with Kaiser-Frazer, I never had the fortune to meet them.

I was the geeky teenager in 1958 who wrote an English class paper on Kaiser-Frazer, my first “book.” In 1975 when “Last Onslaught on Detroit” was published, I was able to send a copy to my teacher, Thomas Quinn, long retired. Amazing how this stuff sticks with you.

Dr Lemming

Posted December 15, 2013 at 9:04 AM

Yup. I hope your teacher was suitably impressed. Not many people become successful book authors.

Robert Swartz

Posted December 19, 2014 at 10:48 AM

I bought my first, lovingly read to shreds copy as a 10-year old in the book department of Horne’s department store in Pittsburgh – like in-depth, yet well-illustrated marque histories, another sadly depleted institution.

I knew nothing of KF at the time, but I loved cars, and the stories you told were fascinating. You, Maurice Hendry, and Beverly Rae Kimes really set the standard at AQ back in the day.

I am glad to see that you have enjoyed that book. I bought it when it was first out (late 70s?) and recall enjoying it a lot. It is still on a shelf in the basement, and I really ought to re-read it. However, I am still trying to find time to make headway on the bio of Walter Chrysler that I got for Christmas.

I think it is indisputable that Kaiser led the way on the bright and bold interiors that became commonplace by the mid 1950s. It is strange that as stylish and colorful as GM’s offerings were in the early 1950s, the interiors were not really all that different from those of the 1930s, other than more chrome on the dashboards. The grasscloth covering the dashes was always one of my favorite Kaiser interior touches.

I’ve seen pictures of the polar bear-themed one in Collectible Automobile; it was midnight blue with a white top and survives to this day. But my favorite is the Hawaiian themed one! I am guessing the table is Plexiglas; it was still a gee-whiz material at the time, wasn’t it?

I haven’t read Langworth’s K-F history, but I do have his book on Studebaker’s postwar years; it is excellent.

I think that I have read in Collectible Automobile that the tanning process wasn’t the accurate, so furs and hides had a bad odor, especially in summer time. Does anybody knows if it was true? Tank you guys.